Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Lord Campbell of Pittenweem Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

Rather like the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), I feel that everything that should have been said has been said—most notably, perhaps, by the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), whom I am glad to call my friend, albeit outside the Chamber. After all, we were once in the same party together.

It is inevitable on these occasions that we speak, as it were, through the prism of our own recollections. Of course, Nelson Mandela created many iconic images, but one in particular sticks in my mind, and it has already been mentioned. Let me put it in context. I had not really understood the absurdity of apartheid in sport until 1965, when, at the White City stadium in London, two teams from South Africa were competing in the annual athletics championships, a black team wearing black blazers and a white team wearing green blazers. They were able to compete against each other at the White City stadium in London, but they could not compete against each other in Cape Town or Johannesburg. If I had any doubts about the absurdity of apartheid in sport, they were most certainly extinguished on that occasion.

As we have heard, sport in South Africa was a deeply divisive issue. When in 1995, at the rugby world cup final, Nelson Mandela wore a South African rugby shirt to present the winner’s trophy to the South African captain, he made an extraordinary gesture. Indeed, it goes a little further than we have heard today, because Mandela wore the No. 6, which was the jersey number of the white South African captain. I shall finish now, because so many hon. Members wish to speak, but by that simple act he turned what was divisive into something that was a force for unity. Surely on that occasion there was no better way to express his ambition for his country.